The slow grind keeps going, for me has been Cape Fear and FOMK S05, they both good in their own ways its just that I fall behind with other stuff in real life but dont want to stop half way, but finally this is the episod I felt makes the Mars situation and the Titan mission feel like part of the same story, even though they leave you with two very different feelings. Dev and Kelly both decide they already know what has to happen and both go around everyone else to make it happen, the difference is Dev leaves people dead and hurt while Kelly gets the result she wanted, so one of them looks like a monster and the other a hero and I do not think the show should let that difference settle who was actually right to keep the spice going. Dev clearly crosses a line but Kelly also puts the entire crew at risk once Walt already gave the order to turn back, she just gets away with it because it works out. The landing gives Happy Valley one good moment after months of shortages and people wanting to leave and I like that the episode does not pretend reaching Titan fixes anything or rebuilds the six domes that just got destroyed. The celebration is real but the disaster is still sitting there once the everyone just stops cheering or caring, not sure, but what I want now is for the next episode to judge these two on what they did, not just how it turned out.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
Dev is a lot harder to defend now because this was not an accident caused by Palmer losing control in the field, Palmer straight up says the attack followed the plan Dev signed off. The point was to wipe out crops and food storage so the Sons and Daughters of Mars would finally give up and just typing that out says enough about how far Dev has let himself go, he cant cut a supply line because they produce their own so it was basically blow up their crops so they starve, plain and simple, thats fucking terrorism. He already knows Happy Valley is barely holding on, aid is getting cut, food is rationed, equipment keeps failing and spare parts are running out, and instead of treating that as a sign the colony needs a political solution he makes things even harder for everyone living there. Six domes get taken out, one person dies, seven more get hurt and two are critical, and the food supply drops from about two months down to two weeks, that is not pressure meant to force a negotiation, it is an attack on the same people Dev claims he is trying to save from a cause he thinks is doomed. His reaction after does not help either, he asks if Alex was there and Palmer cannot even answer him, all he gets confirmed is a young woman is dead and he still backed the plan to torch the food supply, even with the domes intact those people were looking at starvation. Dev seems upset because it got personal not because he realizes the plan itself was wrong, and that makes his guilt feel late and weak, so much stupidity coming out of someone so smart.
The human cost is what keeps the Mars side from turning into another council room argument, while Alex is celebrating his birthday with Lily and their friends right when the domes get hit and the show turns a normal little party into the clearest proof that Dev has lost touch with the people he is supposedly fighting for. That party is kind of silly on its own but it matters because these are young people trying to have a life while the adults fight over who controls Mars, this seems to be a world where people still go out and have fun, thats what the party is mostly about, but then one of them is dead and others are badly hurt because Dev wanted to break the will of the rebellion. I liked that the episode does not let the politics stay clean at all, the council has to deal with the dead, the injured, the food that is gone and more people saying they want to go back to Earth, truth is that who wants to be there anymore with how tight is food and the danger that it represents with this kind of attacks. Aleida joins that group because the Titan mission is wrapping up and her family is back home, and her decision shows how weak this independence push has gotten after six months, the early unity is gone, the money system is falling apart and the regular workers keep getting told to accept less while the people in charge keep insisting they will never surrender. It seems to be just Miles who still believes giving up would destroy everything they fought for, but the entire situation is choaking him leaving him out of room and having to face a situation that not the best speech can fix, people are dying, Dev did not create every shortage but he turned a bad situation into one that might not be survivable.
Kelly gets the more exciting half of the episode and I get why the landing feels like such a big win once the Kosmos 1 crew is already dead, their attempt at Titan fails because of a bad calculation that pulls them toward Saturn instead and Sojourner stays on the radio with them until the signal cuts out for good. That gives Walt a real reason to cancel the landing and turn back to Mars and even if he does not like Kelly and made that call fast, but it means choosing not to repeat the same disaster, that does not mean he has become a coward, its just better to recognize failure before its too late. For the most part I think Kelly will not accept it because she keeps thinking about she honestly regret her father after he did not land on the moon when he had the chance and I get why that history matters to her, it follow Ed the entire series and cause more than one accident but none of that gives her the right to change the mission without telling the crew. She overrides the order and forces Sojourner toward Titan anyway, dragging everyone on board into a decision none of them made and the fact that it works out does not make the method okay, it is the same story repeating again, Ed got lucky a few times until he wasnt. If the ship had failed she would be responsible for putting that crew in danger against a direct order, but because they land safely everyone gets to celebrate while the argument about what she did vanished. Not to throw her under the bus but would be nice if the show puts more attention to what she did, Walt needs to find out what she did and Kelly should have to explain why her own fear of regret mattered more than the crew getting a say in risking their lives.
This honestly was such a good episode because it reminds me a lot to Ed, and the landing still works as a moment with tons on impact on the series because Miles understands what Happy Valley needs from it, he pushes Aleida to broadcast the mission audio across the whole base since the ship and the people flying it came out of work done on Mars and that pulls both sides of the conflict into the same moment whether they like it or not. Dev, Palmer, the council, the governor and the regular workers all end up listening because the landing belongs to the colony even while the colony cannot agree on anything else, and I liked that more than a straight celebration on the ship would have been. It gives Mars something good without pretending the political fight is close to be over or forgoten for a minute, after that its all back to regular business, everyone at Happy Valley gets proof their work means something but nobody walks away with more food, spare parts or a real path toward independence. Dev and Kelly both believe they know better than the people around them and one choice ends with someone dead while the other ends with people cheering, but both came from been walking a thin line before becoming wreck less thats for certain. This is one of the stronger episodes of the season for me because it gives these characters a win and a disaster at once and leaves the consequences sitting there waiting from everyone to drop a gear and come back to reality at the final episodes, the landing is worth celebrating, it just cannot make anyone forget who got hurt, who got ignored and who still has to answer for what happened.
#forallmankind, #television, #tvreview, #episodereview, #seasonfive, #mars, #titan, #happyvalley, #kelly, #dev, #palmer, #aleida, #miles, #alex, #lily, #sojourner, #space, #sciencefiction, #scifi, #colony, #independence, #sabotage, #landing, #astronauts, #spaceseries
Rating: 80/100
Originally posted through scrobble.life/tv.